A typical light illumination apparatus comprises an arrangement adapted for illuminating a light sensitive material. Such material may e.g. comprise printing plates, materials adapted for rapid prototyping, film, etc. The illuminating is performed for the purpose of obtaining certain changes of properties of the illuminated material. Such illumination may thus e.g. result in the establishment of an image on the illuminated material or a certain structure.
In order to obtain the desired illumination, light must be modulated. One prior art method of modulating light transmitting to an illumination surface is to apply a single or multiple beam laser, which may be modulated when performing a scanning movement over the illumination surface.
Another and more recent way of illuminating an illumination surface is to apply a so-called spatial light modulator. Examples of such modulators may be a DMD, an LCD, etc. The spatial light modulator is adapted for modulating an incoming light beam into a number of individually modulated light beams.
A problem of the prior art is that the obtainable modulating speed is somewhat limited due to the nature of the applied light modulators combined with the required energy and illumination speed for some applications.